A research printed in Public Understanding of Science offers proof that many nonreligious individuals stereotype Christians as incompetent in science as a result of they consider that Christianity and science battle with one another. The research additionally discovered that when Christianity and science are described as being appropriate, nonreligious people are likely to have extra constructive views of Christians.
“There’s a belief in many Western societies that science and religion are in conflict. For example, many prominent atheists such as Steven Pinker and Sam Harris opposed Francis Collins as the head of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) because he was an Evangelical Christian,” mentioned research creator Cameron Mackey (@CameronDMackey1), a doctoral candidate at Ohio University.
“There have also been countless debates over the teaching of evolution in schools and whether Intelligent Design has a place in the classroom. We were interested in the consequences of this belief in religion-science conflict for nonreligious people’s attitudes toward religious people (in this case, Christians). That is, we wanted to know whether the belief that Christianity and science conflict with each other explains why nonreligious people stereotype Christians as incompetent in science.”
“Furthermore, we wanted to see if changing perceptions about Christianity and science being in conflict (to being more compatible) would lead nonreligious individuals to change their stereotypes of Christians in science to become more positive.”
For their research, the researchers recruited a pattern of 365 contributors from Prolific. Out of those, 151 recognized as Christians and 214 recognized as nonreligious. The contributors had been straight requested: “How incompatible vs. compatible do you personally believe science and Christianity are?” They responded on a seven-point scale.
To assess implicit perceptions of intelligence, the contributors then learn a generic description of an individual named “Kevin,” who was described as clever. Kevin attended a prime college and used his abilities “to help answer some of the world’s most complex problems.” Christians had been then requested how seemingly it was that “Kevin had a PhD” and whether or not Kevin was a Christian or an atheist.
Finally, contributors had been requested to explicitly fee totally different teams (atheists, agnostics, “spiritual but not religious” people, Christians, Jews, and Muslims) on totally different attributes (intelligence, curiosity in science, competence, competence in science, and scientific skill) on a scale of 0 to 100.
Mackey and his colleagues discovered that Christian contributors had been extra prone to consider that science was appropriate with Christianity than nonreligious contributors.
Christian contributors noticed Kevin as extra prone to have a PhD and be a Christian, whereas nonreligious contributors noticed Kevin as extra prone to have a PhD and be an atheist. Similarly, Christian contributors perceived Christians as extra clever than nonreligious contributors, whereas nonreligious contributors perceived atheists as extra clever than Christian contributors.
In addition, Christian contributors perceived Christians as extra scientific than nonreligious contributors, whereas nonreligious contributors perceived atheists as extra scientific than Christian contributors.
The researchers additionally discovered proof that compatibility beliefs mediated the connection between non secular affiliation and perceptions of Christians’ intelligence and scientific skill. In different phrases, nonreligious people had been extra prone to consider that Christianity and science incompatible, which in flip was related to perceiving Christians as much less clever and scientific.
“Our research demonstrates that perceiving conflict between religion and science can have detrimental effects not only on Christians’ performance and interest in science (as prior research has shown), but also on nonreligious people’s stereotypes about Christians,” Mackey instructed PsyPost. “That is, because nonreligious individuals are more likely to believe that Christianity and science can’t work together, they are more likely to stereotype Christians as uninterested in or incompetent at science.”
To higher perceive the causal relationships concerned, the researchers carried out an experiment with 799 contributors who had been recruited by way of Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. Out of those, 520 recognized as Christians and 279 as nonreligious. They had been randomly assigned to learn one among two articles. One article portrayed Christianity and science as being appropriate, whereas the opposite described them as incompatible.
The contributors then accomplished the identical implicit and specific measures as within the earlier research. Mackey and his colleagues discovered that nonreligious contributors perceived Christians as extra clever and scientific after they had been offered with info displaying that Christianity and science are appropriate, in comparison with nonreligious contributors who examine them being incompatible.
The findings point out that “if people are reminded of how Christianity and science can potentially coexist, people’s perceptions of Christians in science can become more positive,” Mackey mentioned. “Making perceptions of Christians in science more positive is crucial for increasing Christian representation in science and increasing trust between religious and nonreligious individuals in scientific domains.”
“A short narrative about ways Christianity and science could coexist was enough to boost nonreligious individuals’ perceptions of Christians as scientific measured by a composite of interest in science, competence in science, and scientific ability (from a rating of 38.63 out of 100 among those who read about Christianity and science being in conflict, to a rating of 53.35 among those who read about Christianity and science coexisting),” he defined. “This surprised us, given the frequency with which negative stereotypes about Christians in science (and beliefs about the religion-science conflict more generally) are expressed in American society.”
But the research, like all analysis, contains some caveats.
“One caveat of our research was that it was conducted in the United States, where stereotypes about Christians being unscientific are common (Rios et al., 2015). In other countries, different religions may be perceived as incompatible with science (e.g., Islam in the UK; Ecklund et al., 2019). In the future, it would be interesting to test whether nonreligious individuals in the UK exhibit more positive stereotypes of Muslims in science after reading a passage about how science and Islam can coexist.”
“Furthermore, our manipulation was rather direct; we told individuals that Christianity and science were either capable of coexisting or not. Testing these effects in a different way, such as presenting participants with an example of a Christian scientist (e.g., Francis Collins; Sharp et al., 2021), may be another method to change nonreligious individuals’ perceptions about the relationship between Christianity and science.”
“Our research suggests that nonreligious individuals may be less likely to see Christians as acceptable candidates in scientific positions. More research is needed to understand how scientists in America (where nonreligious people are overrepresented; Ecklund et al., 2019) perceive Christians applying for research assistants or graduate students in their labs, and whether influencing scientists’ perceptions of Christianity and science makes scientists evaluate Christian applicants more positively than they would otherwise.”
The findings even have some sensible implications.
“Our findings suggest that reminding individuals that Christianity and science can coexist can help reduce nonreligious individuals’ reliance on negative stereotypes about Christians in science,” Mackey mentioned. “These changing perceptions may help increase Christians’ representation in science. Because nonreligious individuals are overly represented in science (Ecklund et al., 2019), they may unwittingly ‘gatekeep’ science from Christians if they do not believe Christianity and science can coexist. Christians are a large part of the American population so it’s important to increase their representation in science lest we miss out on a lot of potential scientific talent.”
“Furthermore, by changing beliefs about whether Christianity and science can coexist, we can potentially reduce the polarization around attitudes toward science between religious and nonreligious groups,” Mackey continued. “These findings are especially important given how Evangelical Christians were skeptical of the COVID-19 vaccine and have some of the lowest levels of trust in science (Khullar, 2022).”
“Scientists often believe that religious people won’t be interested in listening to them (Scheitle et al., 2018), potentially because they think Christianity and science can’t work together. However, if they do believe Christianity and science can work together, scientists and Christians can engage in more dialogue with each other and potentially increase the trust between these groups.”
The research, “Christianity-science compatibility beliefs increase nonreligious individuals’ perceptions of Christians’ intelligence and scientific ability“, was authored by Cameron D. Mackey, Kimberly Rios, and Zhen Hadassah Cheng.
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